Moonage Daydream

A little back story first. I am in the midst of shooting a documentary about the Fabulous Thunderbirds and their huge I believe contribution to what is now known as the music capital of the world. There is a lot of information and my intention is to convey the story as I experienced it. When I first came to Austin in 1979, it was a different place than it is now. Kind of a little big college town with lots of cosmic cowboys and students. The T-Birds were really taking off and had just released their first album. It was a place of experimentation and our world here was filled with music, with art, films and people expressing themselves and learning about things. I was no different. What I remember most clearly was an introduction to French New Wave films and the Fabulous Thunderbirds. Both on and off the screen I was surrounded by a real wonderment.
What I want to do is to produce a documentary that gives the viewer a simulated experience much like the one I encountered here in Austin wide-eyed and eager. Young. So...my means of doing so is to fill my head with music documentaries. I am going to share the ones I watch on this blog. The first I selected to watch is the David Bowie doc Moonage Daydream. Directed by Brett Morgen who suffered three flatline heart attacks during the filming. Boy, I can relate. He survived and went on to win a ton of awards and thrill at Cannes Film Festival who usually turn their noses up at documentaries.
The film took five years to make and was the first film to be sanctioned by the Bowie estate. It told me a lot of things I never knew but should have about David. He was a sculptor and a screenwriter among his many other unworldly talents. It showed me a lot about David Bowie's creative process, how he moved from place to place to re-invigorate his imagination. What a jewel that is...David Bowie's imagination. He was right protect it. Without giving too much away, the part about his re-location to Los Angeles was especially enlightening. He hated the city and moved there because he felt hindered in England. Dried up so to speak. With somebody like David Bowie, a fate much worse than death.
The film could easily have fallen into a realm of becoming maudlin, but doesn't. I believe in my own humble opinion from Bowie's last album, he faced the process of dying as an adventure, perhaps life's greatest one.
Here are my takeaways from this extraordinary film.
The colors of course. It gives the viewer the sense of what maybe a Pink Floyd laser light show might indulge. 
The Beatle-type of mania from the fans...which we all get. We all want to be there at those shows over the years screaming, crying. collapsing. David Bowie encouraged the behavior in us all. How can we not respond in kind to someone who was so fierce and unafraid in his own expression?
Without any sort of bulleted list of scenes, the film takes you on a journey, a moonage daydream in itself, through David's work and music. What a joyful trip always to travel through the magnitude of those songs that shaped you? It plays upon your own feelings you had when the tracks were originally released and allows you the viewer to participate in the film, something to me that makes a film great and not just good. It allows you to feel close to your idol. If only for just a moment, to feel what David Bowie felt.
Cherry-picked moments from televised interviews impart Bowie's droll sense of humor or should I say humour? He was always so wonderful in these moments, never ever rude but oh so genuinely opinionated in his very British manner. I couldn't help but think how many terrified teenagers grappling with their identities and sexuality had been given license to be themselves and go bravely by these moments, by David Bowie's own brutal, yet endearing and hysterically funny means of expressing himself.
I'd personally been affected by David Bowie's experimentation with words and computers. I liked how Morgen approached this period and was intrigued by the studio musicians' work. I always love in documentaries or literature when the subject talks about how the song or music was created. It's fascinating to me. What Bowie had to say about his process has influenced me as a writer.
The dancing...when you watch all of the movement in this motion picture, you can't help but realize how everything David Bowie did was art. Creating. His dancing among all of the other talents give the effect of him being operated by a puppeteer choreographer, but it's all him. It's like magic.
And the clothes. I remember the SNL "The Man Who Sold the World" performance with Klaus Nomi. I'd been so young when I saw this. Never been out of Beaumont, but knew there was a great big other world out there. I felt fear, enjoyment, titillation, so many things all at once. And..if you go back and watch this video from the show, you get the feeling that maybe Brett Morgen spawned his film from the thing. It gives you a little taste of what can be done with great cameras and lenses and imagination. "Are you there, David?"

Watch Moonage Daydream on Hulu and HBO Max.